The path to a real healthcare system
Essay by Dr. Paul Hammer, founder and CEO of BIOMES NGS GmbH
Germany came in second behind Japan in a study rating the national health care systems of 24 OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) conducted by the British job agency for medical professions (Source: www.bdae.com). Factors included the percentage of the gross national product spent on the healthcare sector, the number of hospital beds, doctors, and care staff, and the countries’ average life expectancy. With more than 400 billion euros – 11.3 percent of the gross national product –, Germany is only surpassed by Switzerland (12.3 percent) but ahead of Japan (10.7 percent).
But is Germany’s healthcare system really one of the best in the world?
Our health system is almost exclusively focused on treating disease rather than promoting health. In my opinion, we should make fundamental changes to our thoughts and actions here. If we succeed in promoting a healthy individual lifestyle and strengthening people’s health preventively, we will create positive effects on many levels.
To implement personalised prevention in a practicable way, two measurement methods are crucial from a technological standpoint. For one, sensor technologies, including so-called wearables (e.g., smart watches), will develop more rapidly and enable us to continuously monitor blood parameters in real time. The new Apple Watch, for example, is already said to include monitoring of blood glucose levels, which could result in a paradigm shift in the prevention of diabetes. Secondly, individual biomarker measurements (e.g., the human genome, microbiome) can be used to tailor the way people adapt to their genetical and microbial properties. Personalised nutrition will play a large role in this context. They say that food is medicine for a reason.
If the data from sensor technologies are combined with data gleaned from biomarker measurement, two important elements of prevention are accounted for. First, each person can be guided in finding an individual and tailored lifestyle and diet. Secondly, real-time analysis of blood parameters can identify the transition from a healthy state to a state of disease much earlier. We know that the chances of effective therapy are much higher, the earlier a diagnosis has been made. This is particularly true for costly and complex diseases such as cancer and diabetes. With this preventive approach, we will be able to avoid suffering for patients and unburden the healthcare system.
Large technology companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Apple, and Google are already investing billions into sensor and biomarker technologies because customers consume more through their platforms when they are healthy than when they are sick. In the US, Amazon is now running its own health insurance scheme called “Health Fund”. We can expect this trend to spill over into Europe in due time. The question here is: Do we want to put our health into the hands of large American and Asian technology companies?
The money spent on prevention and health promotion in Germany amounted to 414.3 million euros (Source: www.vdek.com), i.e., 0.1 percent of the entire costs of the German healthcare sector. This is tiny drop in a very large ocean. To prevent us from becoming dependent on corporations from the US and Asia, we need systemic change – away from a system that treats disease to a real healthcare system. We already have the knowledge in Europe and the technologies to do this, but do we have the will and the strength needed to push this change forward on our own terms? I do hope we do.
Dr. Paul Hammer holds a PhD in systems biology and bioinformatics. He is the founder and CEO of BIOMES NGS GmbH. His mission is to transfer technologies from innovative high-precision medical applications into the healthcare industry with the aim of improving people’s health and wellbeing.